“Putin is trying to reassemble the Soviet Union.” “Putin is out of control.” “Putin is Hitler.” “Putin is Satan.” These are just some of the things that I’ve heard people say in the last year or so. But everyone that I’ve heard this from has no idea WHY they think these things. Maybe they think it’s because he was the head of the KGB. (He wasn’t the head of the KGB—only a lieutenant colonel—and yes, I actually overheard someone at a local restaurant say this one day.) But more than likely, people are just repeating what the talking box in the living room told them. What most don’t know is that there is a very valid reason why these claims may, in fact, be true (well, except for the Satan part).
The reason lies in the political ideology known as “Eurasianism.” Eurasianism shouldn’t be confused with the Eurasian Economic Union—although the latter is certainly an extension of the former. And it’s not just the Russian Eurasia political party either. Rather, Eurasianism is a larger ideology of a pan-Slavic “Greater Russia” that seeks a reborn, Russian empire that unites the Eurasian continent “from Dublin to Vladivostok.” Eurasianism has been around since the 20’s, but for reasons you’ll see below, a working familiarity with today’s Neo-Eurasianism (and its chief ideologue) is critical to making more sense out of what is going on in the Ukraine. And as such, it becomes our first-stop down the Ukrainian conflict rabbit hole.
So what is Eurasianism today? In its simplest sense, it is Russian ultra-nationalism. But looking deeper into the movement and its thought leaders, Eurasiansim is much more sinister than that woefully simplified definition. But before we go any further, allow me to introduce the chief architect of today’s Eurasianism. Fellow Turdites, please meet Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin.
Born in 1962, Aleksandr Dugin is a writer and post-Soviet political thinker whose writings frequently appeared in the weekly journal ‘Den’ (translated: The Day). He first gained notoriety in 1992, with his pamphlet “The Great War of Continents” in which ascribes world history to a great metaphysical conflict between to “Orders”—the Order of Atlantic and the Order of Eurasia. Dugin was one of the primary organizers of the post-Soviet, National Bolshevik political party in 1994, and after a failed attempt to enter Russian politics on the National Bolshevik ticket in 1995, Dugin returned to his journalistic roots and re-focused his efforts to influence Russian politics through his books and writings.
Photo: Flag of the National Bolshevik Party
In 1997, Dugin left the since-banned National Bolshevik Party and with the assistance of the Russian General Staff Academy, published Foundations of Geopolitics which called for the annexation of Ukraine because "Ukraine as an independent state with certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics.” It is said that Foundations has been a textbook of Russian military officers for the last 17 years.
Photo: Foundations of Geopolitics
In 1998, Dugin became a geopolitical advisor to the chairman (“speaker”) of the Russian State Duma, Gennadii Seleznev. In 2005, Dugin founded the Eurasian Youth Union whose website states “Our Union is an absolute enemy. This U.S.. This is the beginning and end of our hatred.”
Photo: Flag of Dugin’s Eurasian Youth Union
In 2009, Dugin published his Fourth Political Theory which combines elements of liberal democracy, communism, and fascism. This book was published in English in 2012.
Photo: Fourth Political Theory
(By the way, are you seeing a pattern with the 8-pointed star? That’s called the “Star of Chaos”. Some consider think it is a variant of the “Star of Ishtar”. According to JY896, the 8-pointed star was also one of the symbols adopted by the fascist regime in Nazi-occupied Hungary towards the end of WWII.)
From 2008-2014, Dugin was the Head of the Department of Sociology of International Relations of Moscow State University. It is also said that the economic advisor to Russian President Putin, Sergei Glazyev, is an associate of Dugin’s. Astute Turdites will remember Glazyev as the Russian economist suggesting Russia could dump US Treasury holdings and conduct trade in other currencies.
Photo: Sergei Glazyev
In October, 2014, Dugin said: "Only after restoring the Greater Russia that is the Eurasian Union, we can become a credible global player. Now these processes slowed down very much. The Ukrainian maidan was the response of the West to the advance of the Russian integration."
Dugin has been described as “Putin’s Brain” and “Putin’s Rasputin.” Heck, he even kinda looks like Rasputin.
And the comparisons with Rasputin don’t stop with mere outward appearances. Rather, Dugin’s thoughts and ideas are esoteric in nature and are deeply rooted in mystical thought. In Dugin’s “Great War of Continents” (1992), he describes the basis for his political theories as a great metaphysical drama involving occult geopolitical dualism.
Now if your eyes glazed over at that statement, try reading Dugin’s writings yourself. BTW, I’m not going to link directly to it here as the document lives on a Neo-Eurasian site, but you can search for yourself and scroll down to “Part III”. Or you can get the gist from the summary that the authors of Putin’s Brain make:
[In “The War of the Continents,” ] he described an ongoing geopolitical struggle between the two types of global powers: land powers, or “Eternal Rome,” which are based on the principles of statehood, communality, idealism, and the superiority of the common good, and civilizations of the sea, or “Eternal Carthage,” which are based on individualism, trade, and materialism. In Dugin’s understanding, “Eternal Carthage,” was historically embodied by Athenian democracy and the Dutch and British Empires. Now, it is represented by the United States. “Eternal Rome” is embodied by Russia. For Dugin, the conflict between the two will last until one is destroyed completely -- no type of political regime and no amount of trade can stop that. In order for the “good” (Russia) to eventually defeat the “bad” (United States), he wrote, a conservative revolution must take place.
Dugin has said that Russia needs a “genuine, true, radically revolutionary and consistent, fascist fascism.” And that, “Liberalism, is an absolute evil. . . . Only a global crusade against the U.S., the West, globalization, and their political-ideological expression, liberalism, is capable of becoming an adequate response. . . . The American empire should be destroyed.” Additionally, Dugin has also said that the U.S. is the “kingdom of Antichrist.”
I could go on and on, but I think that you get the picture. I’m including some links below to some further reading. But if you don’t read anything else, at least read this one article:
https://www.nationalreview.com/article/380614/dugins-evil-theology-robert-zubrin
So there you have it—a VERY brief introduction to today’s Eurasianism and its primary idea man.
Now you might be thinking why is this “mad professor” so important to what’s happening in Ukraine? In Part 2 of this article, we’ll answer that question by looking at the ties between Dugin and the earliest revolutionary leaders in the Donetsk People’s Republic, as well as the hero-like figure Igor Strelkov (Igor Girkin) of Slavyansk fame. And, if the hot war hasn’t re-started by then, we’ll move on to look at the competing American geo-strategy and how a showdown between the U.S. and Russian in Ukraine was probably inevitable.
*Special thanks to JY896 for helping me on this article
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Additional reading:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141080/anton-barbashin-and-hannah-thoburn/putins-brain
https://www.opendemocracy.net/article/email/russia-s-creeping-fascism
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-blank/russias-lurch-toward-fasc_b_5169230.html
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/20/fascism-russia-and-ukraine/
https://www.opednews.com/articles/-Neo-Eurasianism---the-Iss-by-Andreas-Umland-080610-4.html
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629801000439
The following 2 articles are longer, academic articles on Dugin for the ambitious Turdite with plenty of free time. Access requires a free sign-up to “academia.edu” :
https://www.academia.edu/1048387/The_Rise_of_Geopolitics_in_Russia_in_th...
https://www.academia.edu/1048384/Neo-Eurasianism_and_Putin_s_Multipolari...
